Free Money Never Sleeps by Stella Whitelaw

into her head without any bidding. She had a strange mind.
    She made a good living from her writing, which was a lot more than some writers did. Her church lodge was warm and comfortable although she did not really like the location. She supported some starving children in Somalia, but not all of them.
    ‘May I join you?’ It was Jed, black shirt, black trousers, jacket slung over his shoulder. Jazzy look.
    ‘Jed. I thought you’d gone home.’
    ‘Not a chance.’ Jed never mentioned his home life. She didn’t know if he was married, divorced or had a partner. Fancy realized that she knew very little about him. He did not look the kind of person she could ask.
    ‘I’ve been to Derby,’ he said, squeezing in another chair beside her, ignoring a few black looks. ‘My friend in the path lab. I did him a good turn once.’
    Fancy dared not ask him what he had learned. He would only tell her if he wanted to. ‘You missed supper. We had strawberries and cream.’
    He groaned. ‘Just my luck. My favourite.’
    ‘I’ve done some homework on my happenings,’ she said, opening her notebook and flicking through pages.
    ‘Your happenings. Very Stephen King.’
    She showed him the list of incidents and her timing record. ‘Do you see anything odd here? A pattern emerging?’ He shook his head. ‘The times are all one minute passed the quadrant.’
    ‘That’s a big word for a little girl,’ he murmured.
    ‘Don’t be patronizing. What does it tell you?’
    Jed pretended to think, chin in fist. ‘He’s a creature of habit. He has to take medication on the hour or the half hour or both. He’s set his mobile to go off every quarter of an hour because he’s always late for appointments. I don’t know why. Perhaps there’s a message there. Is he telling you obliquely who he is and you’ve got to work it out?’
    Jed’s chief super mode began flicking through possibilities. It was odd. It was if he was back at his desk, which had been morelike home than home. He missed the frantic bustle, being over-worked , the hair-raising moments, the rivalry and friendships. Cold cases were the only replacement he could find for a man with one useless arm. Quadrants? It must mean something.
    The evening’s guest speaker was being escorted into the conference hall by the chairman. He looked at home on the platform ; big, muscular, standing firm, no notes. No lectern. He was going to speak straight from the heart.
    That’ll be me up there tomorrow, thought Fancy, the old nerves rising up into her throat. I shall dry up. I won’t remember a word of what I’m going to say.
    It was an excellent talk, amusing and informative. It fired Fancy’s enthusiasm for her genre. She wanted to get to a computer and start writing a new book straight away. She admired the way he researched police procedure in a practical way, spending days with the force, going out at night with them. She wondered if she should do something like that.
    The question time was lively. It would have gone on all night but the chairman drew a halt. ‘I must get our speaker to the bar before it closes,’ he said. ‘And before he goes back to London.’
    ‘He was good, wasn’t he?’ said Fancy, clapping as the speaker left the hall to applause.
    ‘Very good. But I don’t know how he got away with that police work. I wouldn’t have let a member of the public come with us on call, even one wearing a flak jacket. You never know when something is going to turn dangerous. We’re not insured for the public, not even writers.’
    ‘True,’ said Fancy. ‘Perhaps he signs some let-out clause before they go out. His books are full of the correct police procedure. Lots of detail about the workings of police stations.’
    ‘Is that what your Pink Pen Detective does? She always seems to be in some sort of danger and requires rescuing.’
    They were drifting out of the hall, among the last to leave. Stewards were going round, straightening chairs, collecting lost